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Long Read: How Leon Draisaitl, a kid from Cologne, Germany, became a 1,000-point scoring superstar
EARLY YEARS
A young Leon Draisaitl—he had his big blade from a young ageSandra: He didn’t like ice skating very much at first, but we didn’t push it. Of course, Leon was in the locker room and sometimes in his dad’s arms after a game. Leon also watched the games on my lap with total focus, which was unusual because all the other kids were playing together, but he sat and watched.
In 1998, Leon was two and a half and Peter was at the Olympics in Nagano. Leon sat in front of the TV in full ice hockey gear with skates and a stick and watched his dad. It was a bit crazy, and I smile now because Leon’s nephew Carlo (Kim’s son) is the same age and just as crazy about hockey and watching.Peter: He was around five when he started. And did he love it right away? I wouldn’t say so. It was a bit of a struggle. I remember not only one situation, but a few of them where you get up at five in the morning and drive him to practice or to a game, then you put the gear on, you have him dressed and you sweat and it’s hot and he kind of hated it. And after you’re done, he looks at you as said, “I don’t go.” It happened a few times. It’s so funny when you think about it. So, it was definitely a process. What else was he interested in?Sandra: As a mother, it was sometimes exhausting because I tried to show Leon other things, with little success. It was just hockey, hockey, and hockey. Leon needed a maximum of one meter of space, no matter where… then he unscrewed the caps off bottles and played hockey against himself, shooting the caps at himself with his hands for hours until the moves worked. But at that point, he had never been on the ice.
When he was five Leon started at the KEC skating school in Cologne, but he stopped again because he didn’t feel like putting on and taking off his gear. At home, he thought the equipment was great, he even fell asleep with his stick and helmet (his first helmet came from Jörg Mayr), but he didn’t really want to play, because he was shy with all the boys he didn’t know. So, then we went to soccer for a year, Fortuna Cologne, where he had a coach, a girl, who wouldn’t let him shoot, and then he came to me, angry at the coach, and said he wanted to play hockey again. After that it was just hockey.Peter: He had a real talent for ball sport. He could throw the ball immediately, and he was really good at soccer, European football, which I thought was unbelievable. But that only lasted a short time. He still has good ball handling skills though.Leon and Kim (on the left) with two neighbourhood friendsLeon wears his emotions outwardly. You can tell when he’s happy or frustrated. Was he always ultracompetitive?Sandra: For a long time, I wondered why Leon never showed any emotion after a game, regardless of whether he won or lost. The only thing that made him happy after the game was his lunch box with his lunch. I have to laugh… Mummy’s lunch box with treats. Then, at some point, after he lost a game in Iserlohn, he totally freaked out for the first time and smashed his stick. From that moment on, his ambition to win was there, and everything changed.
Leon: I don’t remember the specific game, but I remember a time where I started to be more emotional and I think over time, it’s just who I am. My emotions at times get shown, and sometimes, they go a little too far. I’ve been that way for a long time. I’ve always had the ability to reflect on myself the night after. I’m a very self-aware person, and I think that’s very important when you are emotional, or when you put so much energy and emotion into games, and into situations that you’re able to reflect after, and kind of get back to even and level ground. And I’m always able to do that. So, it doesn’t affect my game.Peter has coached for over 25 years, but he never coached Leon, how come?Peter: It was clear very early that Leon did not feel comfortable when I tried to coach him. We tried like a few times to go to the woods, and we did some off-ice stuff, because I knew what to do because I was coaching myself. But he didn’t feel very comfortable practicing with his dad. Whether it was me or Sandra, we never put any kind of pressure on him.
What we did and what he loved was going out on Sunday, when the stores were closed and in some random parking lot, and put out a net or shoot against the wall or stick handle. He loved these kinds of things. We did that a lot, basically what we call street hockey.JUNIOR YEARS
Leon was improving as a player, but unlike in Canada, where players move away from home at 16 or 17 to go play Major Junior in the WHL, OHL or QMJHL, Draisaitl had to make that decision at a much younger age. That was a tough decision for everyone in the family.Peter: He felt like Cologne was not going the right way, so he wanted a better organization program. He was 13 when he sat in the kitchen and said he was going to Mannheim.
And we were like, what, where are you going, what? Jesus, what are we talking about?Mannheim was three hours from Cologne, which seems like not much, but I had a job, and Sandra had a job. He was gone and we barely saw him during the season. It wasn’t easy for me, but I kind of went the same path when I was playing. If you want to do something with hockey, then you must go for it and be all in.I think it was much harder for Sandra. To see your 13-year-old boy go out the door was tough. He got an apartment in Mannheim with two other boys. You must grow up fast. He was homesick. I remember talking to him on the phone and he admitted he was sad and missed his family, but he never mentioned coming home. He had a goal and he stuck with it. Sandra: Somehow, I knew that Leon would go somewhere else early on, at around 18, I thought, totally naively,........© Oilers Nation
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